Unexpected company never perturbed my mother. She produced bread and cheese and gave the spiced wine a stir with a heated poker before filling goblets for everyone. The drink was a particular favorite of Father’s, claret mixed with clarified honey, pepper, and ginger.
Lord Parr made a face after he took his first sip. “Clary, George? What’s wrong with a good Rhenish wine, perhaps a Brabant?”
“Nothing . . . if you add honey and cloves,” Father said with a laugh. “You are too plain in your tastes, Will.”
“Only in wines.”
I was not surprised that the two men knew each other. They both sat in the House of Lords when Parliament was in session. Standing by the hearth, they broadened their discussion of wines to include Canary and Xeres sack.
I joined Mother and Dorothy, who sat side by side on a long, low-backed bench, exchanging family news in quiet voices. I settled onto a cushion on the floor, leaning against Mother’s knees. At once she reached out to rest one hand on my shoulder.
The sisters did not look much alike. Mother’s hair was light brown and her eyes were blue like mine. She was shorter than Dorothy, too, and heavier, and markedly older, since she’d been married with at least one child of her own by the time Dorothy was born. She might never have been as pretty as her younger sister, but she had always been far kinder.
“Speaking of imports,” Lord Parr said, “I have just brought a troupe of musicians to England from Venice, five talented brothers who were delighted to have found a patron.”
The mention of music caught Mother’s attention. “How fortunate for you,” she said.
“My wife dearly loves music,” Father said. “She insists that all our children learn to play the lute and the virginals and the viol, too.”
“I play the virginals,” Lord Parr confessed, after which he and my mother discussed the merits of that instrument for nearly a quarter of an hour, until Dorothy, with a series of wide but unconvincing yawns, prevailed upon him to escort her to the chamber she shared with several other former maids of honor.
“As you told Bess,” she reminded him, “it is not safe for a woman to walk unescorted through Whitehall Palace at night.” She all but pushed him out the door.
A moment later, she stuck her head back in. “You should take Bess home and keep her there, Anne,” she said to my mother. “The king singled her out and admired her beauty. You know what that means.”
Dorothy’s second departure left behind a startled silence.
“Did His Grace pay uncommon attention to you?” Mother exchanged a worried glance with Father. The concern in her voice made me long to reassure her, but there was no way to hide the truth. Too many people had noted the king’s interest in me and would remember exactly how long we had spoken together.
“He . . . he called me a pretty little thing.” I squirmed under their scrutiny, feeling like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
“And what did you think of him?” Father asked.
“That he is old and fat and diseased and that I want no part of him!”
“Oh, George,” Mother said. “What shall we do? What if His Grace wants Bess to remain at court?”
“He’s not yet said he does, and as I’ve no desire to dangle our daughter in front of him like a carrot before a mule, we will leave for home first thing in the morning.”
“But if he is looking for a wife, as everyone says he is—”
“Then he will have to look elsewhere. It is not as if there are not plenty of willing wenches available.”
“Sixty of them, by my count,” I said. Relief made me giddy. “Although I suppose a few of them, even though they are still unmarried, may already be betrothed.” I had been myself, to a boy I’d met only once, but he’d died. So far, no other arrangement had been made for me.
Mother exchanged another speaking glance with Father but said only, “Are you certain, Bess, that you wish to cut short your first visit to court?”
“I would gladly stay on if I could avoid the king,” I admitted. “But for the nonce, I much prefer to be gone. Perhaps I can return after King Henry makes his selection. Surely, with so many ladies to choose from, it will not take His Grace long to find a new queen.”
2
Cowling Castle, in Kent, had been built by an ancestor of mine for the defense of the realm. Or at least for the defense of our particular section of the north coast of Kent. Way back in the reign of King Richard the Second, a force of Frenchmen and Spaniards had sailed into the Thames Estuary and pillaged villages as far upriver as Gravesend. Vowing they’d never do so again, the third Lord Cobham constructed a mighty fortress to guard the port of Cliffe and the rest of the Hoo Peninsula from invaders.
Nearly two hundred years later, we had little need for walls six feet thick or two moats. Neither of our drawbridges had been raised more than a handful of times that I could remember and never because we were under attack.
After my return to Cowling Castle, I waited expectantly for news of a royal wedding, but weeks stretched into months and still King Henry did not remarry. In the summer, Father began to cast about for a suitable husband for me, but he was in no great hurry. He said he intended to find me a man of strong moral character who was also possessed of sufficient worldly goods to keep me in comfort. In Mother’s opinion, that combination was as scarce as hens’ teeth, but she had no objection to keeping me at home awhile longer. I was content, too. For the most part.
On a fine mid-October afternoon, freed from their lessons in Latin so that they might practice archery, three of my brothers raced across the drawbridge that connected the inner and outer wards. My sister Kate and I followed more slowly. We brought our sewing with us and planned to sit on a wooden bench near the butts to cheer on the competitors.
“Shall we wager on the outcome?” Kate asked as we made our way to the targets set up near the top of the upward-sloping ground. She was a younger version of our mother with the same light brown hair, sparkling blue eyes, and even temperament.
“Which of the boys do you favor?” I asked as we climbed. The outer ward was twice as big as the inner ward. To make the castle defensible, the curtain walls crowned the high ground around it. The east wall towered over the moat, even though it had been built lower than the other three.
Kate was only fourteen, but she’d already picked up the habit of gambling from our parents. She wagered on the outcome of everything, from card games to wrestling matches. I, on the other hand, saw no sense in committing myself unless I thought I had a good chance of winning.
Five of our brothers were still at home, all younger than we were. Our oldest brother, William, was also junior to me, but he was older than Kate. The year before he had been sent abroad to study in Padua. He’d taken with him two servants, three horses, and Father’s instructions on proper behavior while living in a foreign land. William would have won any archery contest with ease. He was an excellent shot, and a good teacher, too.
Competing at the butts in William’s absence were George and Thomas, both of them nine years old—ten months separated them—and John, who was seven. Henry, at four, and Edmund, who was only two years old, were not yet old enough to manage a longbow, not even one of the smaller models purpose-made for boys just learning archery.
We had an older sister, too, eight years my senior, but she had married and gone away four years earlier. I rarely thought of her anymore. Neither did I think much about the babies Mother had lost, although I knew that there had been five of them, three boys and two girls.